Slay
by Random-Battlecry
Summary: He doesn't ask much. Just for her to save him. That's all. A short piece in Hatter-voice, taking place after the tea party, while they're walking through the woods. Alice/Hatter. One-shot.


**Title: Slay**  
**Fandom: Burton's _Alice_**  
**Characters/Pairing: Alice/Hatter**  
**Rating: PG**  
**Genre: romance/drama**  
**Summary: He doesn't ask much. Just for her to save him. That's all. A short piece in Hatter-voice, or what comes as close to Hatter-voice as I can manage. Takes place after the tea party, while they're walking through the woods.**  
**A/N: So I read the first draft of the screenplay yesterday and, other than all the Alice/Hatter shippiness to be had (can you believe not one but _two_ kisses were cut?), it seemed to suggest that the Hatter's lapses into the Scottish brogue were when he was speaking the language of Outlandish, which came from near Witzend, where he was born. So... maybe not so much a completely different personality as a language characterized more by accent than by word? Hmm.**

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Slay

Tarrant objects to the fact that this Alice says she _does not slay_. Slay indeed she does, and he's willing to swear by it. Dead and dying hearts litter the ground where she walks, faint and falling, thudding to earth on either side. Still walking, still breathing, and when the not-breathing comes then maybe _maybe_ she will figure it out. Sort all this out. Get it all properly numbered and lettered and lettered and numbered.

In the meantime, he's afraid he comes off as rather _irritable_. Certainly she shies away from him a bit when he shifts to speaking Outlandish, the old language tripping twistedly from tongue, the words walking forwards leading his body to follow, only follow, and he can say little to dis-distress her, to set her mind at ease. What facility he has with minds is negligible, to say the least; even his own is unruly and wanders where it will. His mind has a mind of its own. His heart, too.

_I don't slay_, lies Alice.

_He_ remembers, if she doesn't. Even then, even way-back-when, when she was a child, she caught all of Underland off-guard and open to interpretation, looked on them with childish blue eyes and put them in their places, one two three. This: a tea party. That: the Queen's court. The other: croquet on the grounds. _He_ was there, and not only was he there, he _heard_ about it. _He_ knows.

Non-slayer indeed. Killer of indifference and captor of hearts and minds and fireflies. She gives, she takes, she breathes life into them all with her imagination. All this time he's been waiting for her to return, to come back, to make amends, to start over and over again, to present herself willing or unwilling or perhaps to only look at him and smile. He doesn't ask much. Just for her to save him. That's all.

Where is the hero, if not this heroine?

Where is the savior, the champion, the _Alice_, if not this wrongly-sized girl with head distressingly bare?

The day will come. He resists, he is the resistance, he'll fight for all he's worth because he believes it. Time and the calendar days, marching on: the day will come.

In the meantime, if she _will_ insist on forgetting things, perhaps a history lesson is in order. He'll tell it like a story; that's what it is, a story, and if it's true all the same it's still a string of words cut in attractive shapes. A dressmaker's pattern for the ears, the mind, the heart. He's clothed her body, small as it now is; with as much care, he dresses her mind in the colors that suit her: compassion, striped with sympathy, hemmed in courage.

This story is his own history, too, and the memory of it is uncomfortable and ill-fitting. Tiny Alice, perched on the brim of his hat which he holds under his arm, looks up at him and knows. His voice has changed, the words are different. They're _hers_, now, _her_ voice, and she's calling his name. He catches himself with a start and looks down at her.

"I'm fine," he reassures her, reassures himself.

But Alice is wiser than that.

"_Are_ you?"

There's no time for him to be anything else; but he won't tell her that. The day is coming, the day is coming; they have many places to go and little time to get there. They must be pressing on. His footsteps are swift and hers are still, solid, waiting. Holding on.

_I don't slay_, she'd said; but _she_ didn't know. Not yet. Not just yet.


End file.
